Duke Energy Florida’s Smart-Thinking Grid Enables Rapid Power Restoration During Hurricane Idalia

• Advanced automated technology prevented more than 17,000 outages during powerful storm

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., September 12, 2023 /3BL/ - Duke Energy's grid improvements helped customers keep their lights on while Hurricane Idalia crossed Florida.

The smart, self-healing grid used automated technology to avoid more than 17,000 outages, which saved more than 5 million outage minutes for customers.

“Every hurricane season, we consistently see our grid improvements help avoid outages, restore service faster and increase reliability for our customers,” said Melissa Seixas, Duke Energy Florida state president.

Much like the GPS in your car can identify an accident ahead and reroute you around the incident, self-healing technology is like a GPS for the grid. The technology can quickly identify power outages and alternate energy pathways to restore service faster for customers when an outage occurs.

This tool also frees up lineworkers to manually restore power in other locations after a major storm like Idalia.

Last week, the Category 3 hurricane made landfall on the northwest coast of Florida, causing severe flooding, damage and widespread power outages that impacted nearly 200,000 customers in Duke Energy Florida’s service territory.

Duke Energy currently serves more than 60% of customers in Florida with self-healing capabilities on its main power distribution lines, with a goal of serving around 80% over the next few years.

In addition to adding self-healing technology to its system, the company installs stronger poles and upgrades wires, places outage-prone lines underground and trims vegetation near power lines to strengthen the energy grid, make it more resilient and further enhance the company’s storm response.

Self-healing technology video.

Self-healing grid system animation video.

Duke Energy Florida

Duke Energy Florida, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, owns 10,500 megawatts of energy capacity, supplying electricity to 1.9 million residential, commercial and industrial customers across a 13,000-square-mile service area in Florida.

Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), a Fortune 150 company headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., is one of America’s largest energy holding companies. Its electric utilities serve 8.2 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, and collectively own 50,000 megawatts of energy capacity. Its natural gas unit serves 1.6 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky. The company employs 27,600 people.

Duke Energy is executing an aggressive clean energy transition to achieve its goals of net-zero methane emissions from its natural gas business by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions from electricity generation by 2050. The company has interim carbon emission targets of at least 50% reduction from electric generation by 2030, 50% for Scope 2 and certain Scope 3 upstream and downstream emissions by 2035, and 80% from electric generation by 2040. In addition, the company is investing in major electric grid enhancements and energy storage, and exploring zero-emission power generation technologies such as hydrogen and advanced nuclear.

Duke Energy was named to Fortune’s 2023 “World’s Most Admired Companies” list and Forbes’ “World’s Best Employers” list. More information is available at duke-energy.com. The Duke Energy News Center contains news releases, fact sheets, photos and videos. Duke Energy’s illumination features stories about people, innovations, community topics and environmental issues. Follow Duke Energy on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Contact: Audrey Stasko 
24-Hour: 800.559.3853 
Twitter: @DE_AudreyS

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